My ESL students

The elementary students I have been working with are in Standard I, 7 and 8 year olds, in a Maya community. There are some Mestizo and Garifinas , but about 90% have at least a little Maya ancestry.

The class has been pulled out of the other two Standard I sections because they are the lower achievers. This can be good for extra attention but also they are seen as the outcasts at school. There is one boy that is 10 in the class because he and his sister have just arrived in the country with no English and no school experience at all. The sister is 12 and in Standard IV.

The boy is sitting next to the teacher in his room, but his sister is sitting in the back of the room and physically separated from the class by the space to walk to the teacher’s desk. Both of them are in the Standard I room for extra help at the end of most days. The boy does appear to be fitting in to his class more than his sister. When I observed, I noticed that he was trying to keep an eye on what was going on. The girl paid attention to the teacher for a while, and then would end up looking out the window. She seemed to get frustrated with trying to figure it out. The Standard I teacher slides back to Spanish often and sometimes continues the lesson in Spanish. This seems natural since Spanish is their first language too. The standard IV teacher rarely uses Spanish and doesn’t explain anything in Spanish. I do not know which way is better. The teacher that uses more Spanish is getting more of the content across but there is a lot of struggling to understand English. The other teacher is leaving the girl in the dust because she is not getting content and not much of English.

I have only used high fives, shaking hands, hugs, and any other fun way to call attention to their achievement. This works really well because they all compete for attention, sometimes a bit aggressively, even when I am working with them in small groups.

They really love word games like BINGO and remember words that have been presented in a physically or phonetically funny way. I pull the older girl from her class to be my helper. She pulls out the new word, opens it and I read it over her shoulder. This way she is in a position of responsibility and she sees and hears the word again without the pressure of having to say it. The game is made up of words that we have worked on in small groups.

It is time for me to move on to a high school for my 35 contact hours there. I will definitely miss this very energetic group. I makes me sad enough that I have started to ponder the idea of coming back next year. I just do not know how to do it yet.